The boy who shamed Sydney: a tragic tale to which there is no end

It was the picture that shamed Sydney 15 years ago, sparking historic drug reforms that are still saving lives today. But what became of the young boy whose image helped turn the tide in the war against heroin? Eamonn Duff investigates.

When a skinny fair-haired child was photographed in a Sydney lane being injected with heroin by an adult man, it broke every parent's heart and sparked a national outcry.

The image is so confronting, it scarcely seems real today. But then this was Sydney in the late 1990s - caught in the grip of a heroin epidemic and suffering from the sorts of policies that included handing free injecting kits to children on the streets.

A life blighted: Andrew Johnson and an unidentified man inject in Caroline Lane. Photo: Julian Andrews

Enter Andrew Johnson. On January 31, 1999, The Sun-Herald published the shocking image of the 16-year-old shooting up in a syringe-littered gutter, at a taxpayer-funded mobile needle exchange in Caroline Lane, Redfern. The image gave rise to the NSW Drug Summit and 18 months later the first medically supervised injecting room in the English-speaking world was opened. But while Johnson's picture proved a game changer in cleaning up the streets and reducing fatal heroin-related overdoses, did it prove the turning point for him, as his family had hoped?

A fortnight ago, a gaunt, dishevelled seemingly middle-aged man of the same name sat fidgeting and mumbling to himself in Mount Druitt Court, where he faced charges of destroying or damaging property, and stalking or intimidating with intent to cause fear of physical harm. The offences relate to a recent heroin-fuelled episode at the home of his parents.

This was the boy in the laneway, exactly 15 years on. Homeless and hooked on heroin, aged just 31.

''He's beyond help now,'' his mother, Roseanna, says. ''The police say we would be better off trying to forget we have a son.''

Advertisement

His aunt, Alice Scott, says: ''It's a tragic tale to which, sadly, there is still no end. Like throwing a pebble into a pond, the ripples have just got bigger and bigger.''

Roseanna and her husband, John, had two sons. Their eldest, Andrew, showed artistic ability from an early age. ''When he was young, he was a lovely little kid,'' Scott says. ''He was happy, bright, good mannered. A terrific drawer. Then something changed.''

Johnson had attended Whalan High School, in Sydney's west, but after transferring to Mount Druitt High School, he failed to complete year 8.

Unemployed and living at home, he began to drift with an older crowd. Then, several days after his 16th birthday, he had to be revived by paramedics after overdosing on heroin in the locked bathroom of his family home.

Although Johnson refused to attend counselling, he reassured his distraught family that the near-death episode had made him see sense. They believed him - until that Sunday in January 1999, when neighbours knocked on their door, holding The Sun-Herald.

Days earlier, Fairfax photographer Julian Andrews had chanced upon Johnson in Caroline Lane, capturing a moment that still haunts him.

In turn, he had created a hot political potato: when then health minister Dr Andrew Refshauge dropped into the Parliament House press gallery to see the photo for himself the Friday before publication, witnesses said he stared speechlessly for 45 seconds and turned ''visibly white''. By the time the paper was printed, the needle service that lured Johnson 45 kilometres from his family home for a hit had been scrapped.

On Friday, former premier Bob Carr recounted the moment he saw the image.

''I recall it vividly and what it drove home to me was simply this: You can live with people injecting themselves in laneways but the chances of them killing themselves is much greater than if they're in proper accommodation. If they're creeping into laneways and parking lots, you've got no chance of plugging them into a rehabilitation service.''

He also pointed to the risks faced by paramedics who were stumbling down dark alleys and running the risk of needle-stick injuries.

With a state election weeks away, Carr announced an unprecedented five-day drug summit to find new ways of tackling drug addiction, if re-elected. It was at those resulting parliamentary sessions that the controversial Medically Supervised Injecting Centre was tabled.

Carr recalls the ''emotion'' he felt that day: ''My colleagues John Della Bosca and Craig Knowles put in front of me a motion to allow it. I remember being very ambivalent about it, I remember agonising about whether it was the right thing.'' But, he added, the image of the boy in the laneway had ''summed up'' the argument for a limited experiment. ''It persuaded me,'' he said.

As parents, politicians, health experts and anti-drug crusaders became embroiled in a bitter and very public legal row over the future facility, Johnson faded into the background, his own life at a crossroads. He refused to attend drug rehabilitation and spent time in institutions before returning home to his parents for Christmas.

''Everyone went out on a limb for that boy,'' Scott says. ''I tried to help him in different ways, like getting him back drawing. I offered to get him a bench and some materials so he could display his art and sell it. We coaxed him in every way you could think. But I think you have to accept there are some kids who don't want to be helped.''

In the years since, he has faced at least 10 charges including larceny, shoplifting, assault, attempted self administration of a prohibited drug and having goods in his personal custody suspected of being stolen.

During that time, he and long-term partner Coral-Lee Jones have produced four children. One died aged one, and the remaining three have been removed from their care. Johnson has inflicted years of abuse on his parents but they never gave up hope that one day he might turn his life around. As recently as July 2012, they accepted their homeless son and his partner back into the family home. However, after returning home from hospital to see his sick wife last April, his father was confronted by Jones with ''a needle in her arm'' and Johnson ''passed out'' on the sofa. According to police documents tendered in court, Johnson later launched a terrifying attack on his father, threatening to ''poison'' him. He broke the landline telephone, then tampered with the fuse box, leaving his father alone in darkness. When police later arrested the pair, both were so drug affected they were ''unable to understand basic questions''. Despite the apprehended violence order in place to protect his parents, police had to return on November 25 last year after Johnson overdosed.

According to documents tendered in court, officers opened the screen door to find Johnson ''slurring'', ''fidgety'' and ''yelling'' at his frightened mother who sat on the lounge opposite. When police asked what he had taken, he replied: ''$50 of heroin.''

Over the past 12 years, the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre has managed almost 5000 overdoses that would otherwise have occurred on the streets. To date, there has not been a single fatality. Carr said: ''Who knows what those lives saved represent in terms of people who eventually shrug off the drug, get out there, find a job, support families and make a contribution?''

Johnson's broken family have stopped believing he can become one of those people. On Thursday, a warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to reappear before court.

But Dr Marianne Jauncey, medical director at the injecting centre, insists there is ''always hope''. ''When someone goes through this as a family, I cannot even begin to comprehend the depth of their despair.

''But as a health professional with experience in addiction, I have learnt to never give up hope. When people quit and then go back to using, it's not a failure of personality or strength of will, it is an inherent part of the condition. He is still only halfway through his story. While he is alive, there is a chance.''

Opioid painkillers inject new lethality

Fatal opioid overdoses are on the rise once more but today it is the pharmaceutical variation of heroin that is fast becoming the needle addict's drug of choice.

While overdose deaths are significantly lower than their peak in 1999 and 2000, experts have seen a rising trend since 2007, coinciding with the increased availability of prescribed opioid painkillers, which are obtained unlawfully by dealers and addicts.

Louisa Degenhardt, senior research fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, confirmed traditional street heroin accounted for only 30 per cent of opioid-related deaths, compared with well over half in the late 1990s.

''Heroin is still around and is contributing to a fairly consistent proportion of opioid deaths in Australia,'' she said. ''But people who use heroin have always used a large range of different drugs. Pharmaceutical drugs are among these.''

OxyContin and similar opiate painkillers have revolutionised care for chronic pain sufferers. But addicts ''doctor shop'' for multiple prescriptions and pharmacists frequently fall prey to stolen and fake scripts. Legitimate pain sufferers are also feeding black market demand by obtaining the drugs, then selling them.

Commonly dubbed ''hillbilly heroin'', the opioids are most commonly available in pills and patches from which the drug is extracted so it can be injected for a faster high. According to the latest research by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, 500 Australians aged 15 to 54 died of an opiate-related overdose in 2008, up from 360 in 2007. Only one-third involved heroin.

Preliminary 2009 statistics show 612 such deaths, a 22 per cent increase from 2008, and 705 in 2010, a 15 per cent jump.

''Pain relief medication is better than ever, so there are good reasons why prescriptions have increased,'' said Marianne Jauncey, the centre's medical director. ''But GPs aren't always well supported in terms of alternative non-pharmacological treatments. As a result, prescriptions specifically for opiates in this country are skyrocketing.''

Julian Andrews still haunted by his photos of school-aged kids injecting heroin

Rarely in Australia has a photograph had more impact politically than that taken by Julian Andrews. Now living in London, the photographer is still haunted by the moment.

There has seldom been a month since I took those photos that I haven't had cause to recall that day.

Myself and journalist Candace Sutton had been assigned to investigate Sydney's growing heroin problem and had been tipped off that Caroline Lane was particularly bad. It was insane.

We had been there a while when the boy and his ''friends'' arrived. I was shocked by how young the group looked. And it was this that caused me to pull out my camera and start shooting.

The rest is well documented. Andrew Johnson: his name will be forever etched in my memory.

On the day I captured those images, I was not thinking about needle exchange programs, drug policies, politicians, or the upcoming election, at which this issue would become a hot topic.

It was a day that most kids went back to school- and here I was, witnessing the awful ''spectacle'' of a school-aged lad being injected with heroin. It was awful and I hoped that by photographing the scene, it might help prevent others from falling into this same dreadful downward spiral.

I am aware there was a massive impact. If the legacy of those pictures was to help make Sydney's supervised injecting room a reality, then I'm honoured, because I know many lives have been saved.

But I had always wondered what became of the boy in the laneway and to hear about his life since has taken away some of my pride.

My only hope now is that the legacy of those photographs is fulfilled and that one day Andrew manages to turn his life around.